A lovingly crafted meditation on death, loss and literature.
The Hours (2002)
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Reviews Counted:185
Fresh:149
Rotten:36
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: The movie may be a downer, but it packs an emotional wallop. Some fine acting on display here.
Runtime: 1 hr 56 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Based on the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham, THE HOURS employs Virginia Woolf's classic novel and central character, MRS. DALLOWAY, as its foundation and inspiration. Spanning... Based on the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham, THE HOURS employs Virginia Woolf's classic novel and central character, MRS. DALLOWAY, as its foundation and inspiration. Spanning three different eras, during one day, the film focuses on the parallel lives of three women joined in their depression, alienation, and search for love. Nicole Kidman, wearing a prosthetic nose, is virtually unrecognizable as the tortured writer Virginia Woolf whose ongoing battle with mental illness eventually led to her tragic suicide in 1941. The film begins with the moment of her suicide and flashes back on her life and work as she crafted her most memorable character, Clarissa Dalloway, in 1923. In 1950's California suburbia another woman, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), struggles with alienation and depression. Trapped by her clinging young son and an adoring husband whom she does not love, the desperate woman tries to prepare for her husband's birthday but cannot stop reading MRS. DALLOWAY. Finally, in modern day Manhattan, Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep), a lesbian who lives with her lover (Allison Janney) and her daughter (Claire Danes), struggles to prepare a party for her ex-husband (Ed Harris) who is dying of AIDS. Director Stephen Daltry uses beautiful overlapping editing to sew the women's interwoven stories seamlessly together. At the core of this profoundly moving film is the trio of award-winning actresses who grace the screen with their bold and awe-inspiring performances. [More]
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Toni Collette
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, John C. Reilly, Eileen Atkins, Stephen Dillane
Director: Stephen Daldry
Director: Stephen Daldry
Screenwriter: David Hare
Producer: Robert Fox, Scott Rudin
Composer: Philip Glass
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Reviews for The Hours
Conjures some spectacular settings and grown-up topics, but has no story to speak of.
A grave disappointment...oppressively intricate and melancholy without offering much compensatory insight.
Blessed with exquisite performances and seamless cross-cutting between historical time periods, Stephen Daldry's superbly crafted chronicle examines depression, disaster and death.
With her highly publicized phony nose, Kidman becomes an entirely different creature. I don't know if it's her, or if the nose is magical, but one of them deserves an Oscar nomination.
Mr. Daldry and Mr. Hare have succeeded in preserving and even enhancing both the episodic structure and the spiritual essence of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Cunningham novel.
Hare's crisp screenplay adroitly ... keeps faith with Cunningham's meditative prose while adding enough unobtrusive exposition to externalize the characters' emotional lives.
A preposterous faux-feminist manifesto that blames the woes of the modern day female on her historical disconnectedness.
While the story is more literary than cinematic, the make-up folks backstage are headed for Oscars.
Considerable intelligence and strategic finesse have been brought to bear on this handsomely mounted adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
A fascinating and ultimately successful stunt in its cross-cutting among the decades.
This picture will be a major contributor to the award nomination scorecard on both sides of the gender aisle.
Latest News for The Hours
May 05, 2008:
Kidman tipped to play Dusty ![]()
Nicole Kidman has been tapped to play the bee-hived chanteuse, Dusty Springfield, in a biopic to be written by Michael Cunningham, who she worked with for The Hours. More...
June 21, 2006:
Natalie Portman Aboard "Boleyn" and "Kavalier"
The universally-adored and very cute Natalie Portman seems to have a pretty high profile pair of freshly-inked contracts. On one hand, she'll be starring in a historical drama... More...
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